





.0 



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PLANTING THE 
HOME GROUNDS 



THE COUNTRYSIDE PRESS 

BOOK PUBLISHERS 

HARRISBURG, PA. 




1. An ideal approach to the house 



PLANTING THE 
HOME GROUNDS 



Jf HORACE McFARLAND 

AUTHOR OF "getting ACQUAINTED WITH THE TREES, 
"my growing garden," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



HARRISBURG, PA. 
THE COUNTRYSIDE PRESS 

1915 



^3 



^'l^ 
i\'^^ 



Copyright, 1915, by 
THE COUNTRYSIDE PRESS 



NOV 18 1915 



J. Horace McFarland Company 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 



©C(.A416438 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

SECTION PAGE 

1 Make a Plan 13 

2 Study Existing Conditions 14 

3 Plant for Simplicity 17 

4 Unreasoning Imitation 17 

5 Open Spaces of Grass 20 

6 Avoid Straight Lines ' ... 21 

7 Slopes Rather than Terraces 26 

8 Plan and Plant Suitably 29 

9 The Small Dooryard 31 

10 A Natural Plan for the Larger Areas 35 

11 Plant for Succession of Bloom 36 

12 For Spring Bloom 36 

13 For Midsummer and Early Fall 37 

14 For Late Fall 39 

15 These Lists Are Incomplete 40 

16 Hardy Herbaceous Perennials 41 

17 Tropical and Tender Plants 45 

18 Annual Flowers 46 

19 Use Vines Freely 47 

20 Vines to Cover Walls 49 

21 Vines for Trellises, etc 54 

22 Trailing Vines 56 

23 Living Fences and Hedges 58 

24 As to Preparation of Soil 60 

25 Have a Compost Pile 61 

26 Plants do not Like Wet Feet 62 

27 Start with Good Soil 63 

28 Planting Hints 63 

29 Plants Require Trimming 64 

30 About Watering 65 

31, 32 To Make a Lawn 66, 69 

33 Plant Something 69 

(7) 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

THIS little treatise is intended as an introduc- 
tion to home planting, and is not offered as an 
encyclopedia of gardening. If it shall excite 
interest in the right-doing of things that need to be 
done about the home, and then lead to study and 
investigation and work, it will be doing all I can 
hope for. 

Indeed, I take it that getting a man or a woman 
thoughtfully interested in improving any ground — 
be it the smallest ^ 'handkerchief-garden" possibility 
about a city home, or a spacious area there or else- 
where — is the main thing. Gardening does most 
good as it is taken hardest, so to speak; and there is 
not much hope for the home planter who is either 
indifferent or imitative. Through the latter asser- 
tion I mean to express the value of individuality 
in home-improving, as compared with the doing of 
a thing because someone else did it. 

Let me explain. I went to see the lovely home of a 
friend near Baltimore, whose garden is a joy with 
planting that is most successful. In a beautiful vista 
across the place the chief object in sight was a 
gigantic mullein; just the common roadside weed, 
if you please, but here splendidly decorative and 
effective. Did I go home and at once transplant to 

(9) 



10 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

my garden from the weedy pasture nearby a half- 
dozen mulleins? Not at all; I admired Mrs. Bouton's 
achievement and success, but I had enough sense 
to know that it related to her particular place and 
environment; it was hers, not mine. 

Now the home-planting interest that put the 
mullein where it would do the most good is the thing 
to be excited. Home-ground improving needs a 
home and grounds to improve ; but it needs interest, 
thought, desire, and actual love, to be really and 
individually successful. 

There is also the preliminary requisite that, 
before the planting of the home grounds is under- 
taken, the advance work of clearing up shall have 
been done. I am not advocating the use of shrubs 
to hide dirty or disgraceful conditions that ought 
rather to be changed entirely. If an ash-heap must 
be tolerated, as a permanent feature, we may plant 
to contain it. An outbuilding ought not to be so 
decrepit, or ugly, or ill-placed as to require conceal- 
ment; but, if it cannot be either removed or improved, 
it may often be ameliorated by proper planting. But 
let us clean up, carefully, as a preliminary to 
planting. 

Nor do I intend in these pages to propose plans 
that will take the place of those, especially for con- 
siderable areas, of a competent landscape architect. 
Rather are these hints in the nature of the simple 
home remedies, always at hand, good only for what 
they say, and not ''patent medicines" guaranteed to 
fit all diseases and persons and climates ! I want to 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 11 

propose a right start for the smaller home grounds, 
including the city back yard, the suburban home 
plot of modest area, and the farm-home house-lot. 

Just why people are scared of the landscape 
architect I confess I do not understand ! Those able 
gentlemen are nothing but doctors for home grounds 
and larger areas, after all; and it ought to be no 
harder to consult one for a planting problem than 
it is for the housewife to go to her physician for a 
bad headache ! Often the cost of the consultation is 
trifling compared with the saving in the doing that 
follows. I know a man who schemed and screwed and 
shifted and twisted to get for nothing plans for the 
planting of the grounds around his pretentious 
home, eventually paying about a thousand dollars 
more for trees and plants because he had "saved" a 
hundred dollars on the landscape architect. 

True, some of the younger ''landscapers" take 
themselves too seriously, and would feel insulted to 
be asked to make a ten-dollar suggestion; but others 
of more ability have better sense, and some very 
good college and university schools are now turning 
out every year bright young men who have the 
principles of landscape design well sewed into their 
brains, and with a strong desire to make good first 
on little things. 

And, before I venture into the details that must 
justify this little book, let me mention other and 
far better books that the sincere home-ground 
improver can to advantage possess. Bailey's "Man- 
ual of Gardening" is just that, and more, for it tells 



12 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



also of home-ground design and planting in a funda- 
mental way. Mrs. Ely's books on gardening — ''A 
Woman's Hardy Garden" and its successors, are 
of use for the larger grounds. The book "My Grow- 

ing Garden" tells of my 

own trials and triumphs; 
and the library that con- 
tains Bailey's ''Standard 
Cyclopedia of Horticul- 
ture," in six great volumes, 
has an unfailing resource 
for every planting problem, 
whether of a great estate 
or a window-box. All may 
be had through the pub- 
lishers of this little book. 

But, now addressing the 
subject more intimately, 
let me say that the saving 
touch of greenery always, 
and of plentiful flowers 
usually, can be had about 
any home in America, from 
British Columbia to the 
Isthmus of Panama (and so on south, of course), 
regardless of sun, cold, heat, soil, or exposure. In 
smoky Pittsburgh or in sandy Florida something 
will draw beauty from the ground and the air for 
your eyes, if but a little care begins and continues 
the effort for home-betterment. 

For comfortable reference, the subjects relating 




Fig. 2. Showing the eflfect of 
having lawn, trees, shrubs, walks, 
etc., arranged in straight lines. 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



13 



to planting the home grounds will be set off in num- 
bered sections, as they follow. 

1. Make a Plan. Begin right, by first making 
a plan of your home grounds, however small. Have 
this plan to a definite 
"scale," even if it be a 
mere outline. The ''scale" 
I refer to may be of a 
quarter- or half-inch or an 
inch, on paper, for each 
foot on the ground you 
are considering. Anyone 
has a yardstick to meas- 
ure the place, and the 
same yardstick may be 
used to lay off little 
squares on a sheet of plain 
paper, ruling it at right 
angles to quarter-, half-, 
or inch rectangles. Then 
locate everything — the 
house, the fence or hedge, 
the entrances, the out- 
buildings, the paths — if 
they exist; the trees and 
shrubs — if there are any. Get a north and south 
line indicated, so you will know about what the sun 
will do for you. 

Properly made, this plan will show the home 
grounds about as you would see them from an 
aeroplane passing slowly over your place fifty or a 




Fig. 3. Showing the advantage 
of placing the features of the lawn 
in irregular order and employing 
curves. Note the open spaces. 



14 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

hundred feet above. Figures 2, 3, and 8 will show 
you what the plan will look like. If there are ever- 
green trees on the place, indicate them like the three 
such as shown to the left of the path a half-inch 
from the bottom of Figure 3. Leaf -dropping or 
' 'deciduous" trees are properly shown by an irregu- 
lar encircling line that will give their spread of 
branches. Shrub groupings are dotted in, as at the 
left of Figure 3. 

Now if you are of mind to materially change any 
features of the place, make another plan of the 
same dimensions, with the fixed boundaries and 
features only upon it, so that you may have oppor- 
tunity to sketch in the new features. This is a 
''planting plan,'^ and with the two plans you may 
have a complete "before and after" view. 

2. Study Existing Conditions. Look at the plan 
you have made to show existing conditions; think it 
over. If there are existing trees, plants, or vines that 
are to remain, the work to be done must relate 
materially to these. Are they so located that they 
may be used to plant in pictures of God's colors — 
pictures that mean something, and get somewhere? 
Are the existing growths so located as to be really 
doing something for these pictures to, from, and 
along the house? 

Often a tree will seem to be in the wrong place; but 
be careful about removing it or other well-estab- 
lished and healthy growths. John Muir once said, 
*'Any fool can cut down a tree in a hurry, but it 
takes even God a long time to grow one." Some- 




Iig. 4. An jnst:iiir<' ,,7 tlir ('i|<m t ot y<,\\i ncigtil,,,! 
related to your own lioiue 

(15) 



'■"ma 



;,ujuiitLs as 



IG PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

times a rearrangement of lesser objects will permit 
the developing of a fine tree to a great advantage, 
or of a noble shrub to be part of that picture-gallery 
about the home I shall keep harping upon. I remem- 
ber one tree directly in the center of the approach 
to a home that seemed for a while impossibly placed. 
SufTicient thought worked out a simple rearrange- 
ment of the walk that left the tree as a charming 
incident. 

But sometimes a tree or plant is hopelessly out 
of place and must be removed. One efficient, well- 
placed tree or shrub is worth a dozen that are 
crowded, or out of place, or sickly. It took me nearly 
a year to make up my mind about a certain hemlock 
that was interfering with the dignity of a great 
sycamore. When I did take it out, the betterment 
was instantaneously obvious. 

It is not improper to consider your neighbor's 
grounds in this connection. Of course you cannot 
cut or plant for him, but often his tree or shrub or 
grouping will be a part of your home picture-gallery, 
and there is no dishonesty in thus annexing his 
grounds (See Figure 4) . In a certain other case, a man 
planted with care a long garden border, the vertical 
axis of his home place. He was a little higher than 
his neighbor across the street, who could thus get 
full benefit of this rose-decked axis. But the neigh- 
bor avoided thinking, and built a kitchen lattice- 
screen right across that axis, shutting it off for both ! 
He cut himself and his neighbor out from the full- 
seeing use of a five hundred dollar improvement. 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 17 

3. Plant for Simplicity. Not infrequently the 
unguided feeling for improvement, the perfectly 
proper desire to get the benefit of greenery about 
the home, leads to mixed-up or complex planting. 
Contrary to casual thought, that simpUcity which is 
permanently satisfactory is more difficult to attain 
than a general mess! Recall your feeling when 
planting a tree or shrub purchased from a persuasive 
agent, or selected from an enticing catalogue with- 
out any clear idea as to where you would plant it. 
With no thought of making the plant part of a 
picture, you probably placed it in the center of the 
largest open space you had. If several plants came 
at the same time, what more likely than that you 
located them in a row, and at equal distances? I 
remember a dooryard in which the home-owner had 
planted at regular intervals in four straight lines a 
dozen Kilmarnock willows which a slick agent had 
induced him to buy, and which produced in time a 
grotesque and ludicrous appearance. The impulse 
was right, but the uninformed action was unfor- 
tunate! One good climbing rose, for instance, such 
as the Dorothy Perkins shown, planted close to the 
house, in Figure 5, is worth far more than a whole 
yard full of messy and purposeless planting. 

4. Unreasoning Imitation. Too often these plant- 
ing messes come about because of imitation without 
thought. The value of individuality has already been 
urged; why put an expensive blue spruce in the 
exact center of your little lawn simply because your 
neighbor did it? Consider well the plantings that 



18 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



impress you as beautiful; but, before adopting any 
one of them for your planting, also consider your 
conditions, your home, your exposure to sun and 
wind. Think particularly of the picture idea, to 
and from your living-room window, your porch, 




Fig. 5. One good hardy climbing rose, properly placed, is far 
more effective than a messy planting 

your front door. Be guided more by your study and 
observation than by the persuasions of the agent 
or the catalogue, capable as either may be; remem- 
ber that the salesman is selling, and will pass on, 
but you must live with what you plant. 

One form of imitation is safe — the imitation of 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 19 

nature. That lovely country roadside you remem- 
ber passing — there were no straight lines, few indi- 
vidual specimens, no formality at all — and you 
liked it! Remember the pleasing mass effects you 
have seen in a really good public park, where the 
capable landscape engineer has studied mostly in 
God's open book of planting — you will quickly see 
pictures for your own little grounds, rather than a 
formal orchard effect, or a painful specimen showing. 

All this time you may be making plans on the 
second one of the plots you have prepared. It is 
fascinating work, this planting with a pencil, for 
you can change and transplant most easily on 
paper. 

One very good way to get a fair view of what is 
to happen is to select the trees and shrubs you think 
you will want, all of them. Then let each be repre- 
sented by a bit of cardboard or paper, clipped to 
an approximate circle. Take green for the ever- 
greens, blue for the deciduous trees, yellow for the 
shrubs, for instance. From a good catalogue or 
from Bailey's Cyclopedia get an idea of how large 
a spread on the ground each tree or plant will take 
in seven years from planting, and proportion your 
cardboard dummies that way. For example, a good 
lilac may be expected to grow to a diameter of five 
feet in ordinarily fertile ground within seven years. 
If your plan is on a scale of a quarter-inch of paper 
space for each foot of actual ground area, the yellow 
circle representing the lilac would be about an inch 
and a quarter in diameter. You might write the 



20 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

name on it, also, and a figure to represent the height 
— say 8, for it will reach about that height in feet. 

Now these little disks can be moved around, just 
as the artist arranges the details of a picture before 
he begins to draw. Too many? Better to find it out 
thus before you buy! Too high? For a sun-loving 
plant you have only a shady spot? Now is the time" 
to settle that ! This is interesting work, and it is a 
saving of money, too; for you will not buy much 
more than you can properly place and plant. 
^ There is one point to here enforce. 

Many good landscape architects say that 
it is proper to plant more than will even- 
©) ) tually flourish, for the better immediate 

effect. One man says, 'Tlant thick, thin 
^ quick!" Another insists, "Plant thick, 
never thin at all," for he believes in the 
effect of close masses, not in individual 
specimens. Both plans have their merits, 
, and I suspect the right way is to follow 
P^W^^ both, in part. 

5. Open Spaces of Grass. Nothing so 
^ adds to the restful character of the home 
_. I grounds as an open space of turf, be it 

^x\\ ever so small. Even the space of two yards 
(J]b| square (but not laid out square, by any 
^ yycp means !) in clean grass will be far superior 
pj g in effect to the same space jammed with 
A series plauts. I havc a friend who has his twenty- 
teriess^se?- foot dooryard so disposed as to make it 

p e n t i n e 
curves. 






look park-like and far larger than it really 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



21 



is. He does it (a) by maintaining a little bit of lawn, 
and (6) by planting the profusion of flowers he 
always has in simple borders. Fig- 
ures 2 and 3 show how the same 
space may be crowded or open, 
according to its poor or proper 
arrangement, and the open areas for 
grass are seen to appear at once in 
Figure 3. 

6. Avoid Straight Lines. Nature 
has little use in her work for ''the 
shortest distance between two 
points." Our home grounds are usu- 
ally bounded by a rectangle, and 
that affords straightness enough. 
Judicious curves greatly help in 
making beautiful home grounds, and 
they afford natural places for groups 
of plants or small trees, as well. 
Refer again to Figures 2 and 3 for 
evidence as to curves. Plants them- 
selves avoid the straight-edge, and 
will, if left alone, soon open out into 
grace, and get away from the un- 
necessary and unnatural direct line. But curves 
without reason are mere wiggles, and thus worse 
than the severely straight disposition. Figures 6 
and 7 contrast the bad and the better arrangement, 
and the walk from the front in Figure 3 also shows 
a desirable curve. 

But straight lines have their uses in the arrange- 




Pleasing 
curves, because the 
bends vary consider- 
ably in size. 



22 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



ment of home grounds. In a larger area, where 
separate beds of all one sort of bloom, and also 
economic plantings of vegetables, are desirable, the 
rectangle has its place. (Personally, I am not in 
love with flower beds as compared with borders; for 
the latter give so much better opportunity and 
setting, though it is of course not always possible 
to border-treat a whole place.) The plan outlined 
in Figure 8 provides a satisfactory combination of 
useful curves and useful straight lines, and I can 
see how it has many fine pictures to and from the 
house-center. Purely as a memorandum, and not 
at all as a statement of especial suitability, the items 
of the planting of this larger area in Figure 8 are 
given, at the foot of this page. 

Another straight-line use is shown in the 
hydrangea hedge that shuts off sight of a vegetable 
garden, as in Figure 9. Just why an orderly vege- 



Trees and flowers 


used in the plan (Fig. 8) 


on 


the opposite page 


B. Birch Trees 


5. 


Yucca 


25. 


Larkspur, Annual 


E. Elm 


6. 


Chrysanthemum 


26. 


Lilies 


F. Fruit 


7. 


Geranium 


27. 


Dahlia 


H. Hemlock 


8. 


Hyacinth 


28. 


Lychnis 


M. Maple 


9. 


Tuberous Begonia 


29. 


Cosmos 


P. Scotch Pine 


10. 


Forget-me-not 


30. 


Golden Glow 


S. Shrubs 


11. 


Early Phlox 


31. 


Lily-of-the-Valley 


a. Evergreens 


12. 


Late Phlox 


32. 


Roses 


b. Box 


13. 


Coreopsis 


33. 


Sweet Peas 


X. Tulips 


14. 


Cockscomb 




(Spencer Hybrids) 


o. Narcissi 


15. 


Gaillardia 


34. 


Sweet Peas (Ear- 


O. Peonies 


16. 


Snapdragon 




liest of All) 


* Hydrangea • 


17. 


Platycodon 


35. 


Aster 


.-. Phlox, Hardy 


19. 


Oriental Poppies 


36. 


Shirley Poppy 


Barberry Hedge 


20. 


Larkspur, Hardy 


37. 


Verbena 


Privet Hedge 


21. 


Canterbury Bells 


38. 


Nicotiana 


1. Sweet William 


22. 


Gypsophila 


39. 


Begonia 


2. Foxglove 


23. 


Heliotrope 


40. 


Physostegia 
Phlox, Annual 


3. Hollyhock 


24. 


Stokesia 


41. 


4. Privet Hedge 











SRI- 





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24 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



table garden should be screened off I do not know, 
but some prefer to consider the vegetables as unorna- 
mental, and to be kept out of sight. A hedge of 
SpiroBa Van Houttei would be as good or better, or a 
lilac hedge, or one of the lovely Abelia grandiflora. 
While I am discussing straight lines, let me men- 
tion the more set and formal use of such lines, as in 






Fig. 9. The use of a straight-liue hedge as a screen. 
The plant is Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora 

the terrace view shown in Figure 10. This was a 
beautiful and successful effect, but I beg of the 
readers of this humble little book of ideas for start- 
ing home planting to note that it is not shown for 
imitation. It was the result of the development of 
the plan of an able landscape architect, made after 
much study, and at large expense, and just for this 
one location. It would be a sheer crime for an 
amateur to try to work out such a planting. Most 



26 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

of us home-lovers can write a pretty good love- 
letter to the one girl, or to the wife; but we are not 
just ready to produce a Song of Solomon or a 
Browning epic! Let us stick to the love-letter class 
in the home planting ! 

7. Slopes Rather than Terraces. If your home 
yard rises sharply from the highway, a proper access 
must be had. A terrace is a step cut in the ground. 
Necessary occasionally for a considerable ascent, it is 
always difficult to keep in order. Nature slopes all 
her banks; let us use slopes if possible. Sometimes 
careful grading will bring the last steep slope or 
rise next the house, and there we may use steps to 
the entrance, securing in the rest of the slope a great 
chance for effective planting of vines — honeysuckle 
will cover any bank; Multiflora, Wichuraiana or 
Rugosa roses; matrimony vine, wistaria, trumpet 
vine, Dutchman's pipe, and a dozen others, all hardy 
and permanent, will make a steep slope a thing of 
beauty. 

Of one thing the home planter who is undertaking 
actual change of grade must make sure : There must 
be a footing of level or nearly level space about the 
house, unless, as in a hillside or a cliff-surmounting 
location, there is an architectural treatment not at 
all within the scope of this treatise. For the simpler 
home, the footing of ground is essential. Without 
it, the house may appear to be insecurely placed, to 
be slipping down hill. It is also most desirable 
that the slope of the terrace include a double curve, 
however gentle. Follow a flattened-out letter S, 




Fig. 12. Example of deficient footing for the house, 
and of incongruous steps 

(28) 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 29 

laid down, rather than the half of a capital O, also 
laid down. A fine example of a successful slope, 
pleasingly planted, is seen in Figure 11, in which 
case a sloping path did away entirely with any 
approach steps. Yet steps may be made, and 
often are made, an 

exceedingly attractive J ^. 

featureof an approach, mi^^ "^^^ 

if planted carefully, ^r^ ,^Jli 



and thus decorated ^"^'/^j^ -^ .Hwiiv///*^ 
with greenery rather ^^^.'^^'^kI) %^\i''^'^^-' 
than with architecture. ^i"»A 'v^| T^^-^4&; '/^''^ 
Figure 12 shows two " r^^^,^! fe^/^% J:^ 
home-ground misfor- 
tunes— a side-hill house . V. '/J 

without a footing, and ^ig 13. The small e v e r g r e e n s 

*' seemed far enough from the walk when 

expensive steps that t^ey were planted, but six years of 

^ growth showed the mistake. 

are an incongruous 

combination of formalit}^ and informality. If these 
steps, or rather the stones at the sides of the steps, 
were covered with Boston ivy or Virginia creeper, 
the condition would be much bettered. 

8. Plan and Plant Suitably To be attracted by a 
stately elm in perfection after a generation's growth 
in a park, and therefore to plant an elm in a little 
dooryard is a mistake not infrequently made To 
make the best of the space at command, we must 
plant to suit it, considering (a) the space we have, 
(6) the exposure to the sun, (c) the character of the 
soil, and (d) the ultimate size of the tree or plant of 
which we are enamored. Figure 13 shows how an 



30 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



unwholesome crowding resulted from lack of con- 
sideration of the last item. Again, if it is a tree you 
are planting, consider carefully its mature shape — 
whether it makes a rounded head, or one that is 
pyramidal, or resembling an inverted cone. The 
grand elms of New England are of the latter shape, 




Eig. 14. Maple; the heaviest 
growth in the bottom branches; 
hence not well suited for street 
planting, where long trunks are 
desirable. 



Fig. 15. Elm; the heaviest 
growth at the top, inducing 
the tree to have a high trunk; 
hence well suited for street 
planting. 



while a sugar maple takes up more room below. 
See Figures 14 and 15 for examples, and note 
that shrubs also have a definite shape, not always! 
amenable to training. Here the use of the little] 
disks of scale -size previous to planting wouldj 
avoid some errors, at least. The planter must 
remember that the size of the small shrub received 
from the nursery has little to do with what is to 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 31 

happen in two, three, or ten years. Once I planted 
two new honeysuckles as received from a propagator 
of Chinese shrubs. Both were the same size then; 
but in three years one had grown seven feet high and 
across, while the other proved to be a trailer, and 
was covered out of sight until I moved it. 

9. The Small Dooryard. As I have insisted, any 
little space can be planted to some success and to 
some beauty. The window-sills and the fire-escapes 
of city tenements shame many a home-owner who 
has an available square yard of space as compared 
with a square inch in worse conditions. If there is 
the will to plant and the heart to tend, the green 
will surely come, and probably the flowers. 

About the door vines may be grown, for the fine 
Boston ivy {Ampelopsis tricuspidata) will push up 
from the space of three bricks, if a little encourage- 
ment of good soil is there. The Japanese honey- 
suckle will do as well, and south of Pennsylvania 
the English ivy {Hedera Helix) will provide a per- 
manently elegant green growth, while in the colder 
regions the sturdy Evonymus radicans, also ever- 
green, will work up toward the sun, with beauty 
along the way. 

Clematis paniculata, as shown in Figure 16, or any 
one of a dozen glorious climbing roses of the newer 
type, better than the famous Crimson Rambler, 
will grow over the doorway with sun part of the day, 
especially in the morning. 

If the spot is entirely sunless, take a lesson from 
the deep woods, and plant some of our lovely native 



32 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

hardy ferns, taking care to give them, if at all 
possible, a little of the forest soil of rotted leaves in 
which they flourish best. (See Section 24.) The lily- 
of-the-valley (bulbous, planted in late fall, perma- 
nent) will bloom among the ferns in spring before the 
fronds of the latter do their fascinating unfolding. 
Our superb mountain laurel {Kalmia latifolia) will 
live and stay green in dense shade, but it must have 
a little sun to bring bloom. The equally fine great 
rhododendron of the North {Rhododendron maximum) 
will produce its flowers of aristocratic elegance in 
deep shade, if it is footed or rooted in leaf-mold, and 
if it is kept moist by watering in dry times through 
a constant mulch of dead leaves, which as they decay 
form its food. 

In partial shade pansies bloom well, particularly 
the so-called tufted pansies (Viola cornuta). The 
hardy English daisy is also there at home, as also are 
the fall-blooming sedum, the fine Japanese anemone, 
and the various forms of hardy phlox. 

Of course the hardy bulbs will bloom in shady 
places — the hyacinths, the various desirable nar- 
cissi or daffodils, the crocuses, snowdrops, and scillas; 
but they may not find strength enough to be per- 
manent. So. too, the tulips can be had to throw 
brightness into dark places, and the splendid colors 
of the Darwin tulips, if selected to fit, can play a 
symphony of shades in a shady corner. All these 
bulbs must, of course, be planted in the fall, at any 
time up to freezing, save that the daffodils do best 
if planted as early as the bulbs can be had. 




Fig. 16. Clematis paniculata as a porch vine 

(33) 



34 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

I want to say a special word about the columbines 
for shady dooryards, and at the same time say that, 
because they are adaptable to hard conditions of 
light, there need be no idea that they will fail to do 
even better with more sun encouragement. The 
native sort, Aquilegia Canadensis, will carpet a 
shaded corner even with little moisture, and in 
spring its red-and-yellow flowers will nod in every 
breeze. The taller sorts are able to endure partial 
shade, and their flowers — of the selected long- 
spurred types — are long-enduring and lovely. If the 
flower-stems are cut down promptly when the blooms 
fade, there is often a second crop of flowers. 

But our dooryard or back yard may be sunny, and 
not shaded. The vines will grow, and more of them — 
trumpet vine, wistaria, the clematises, the annual 
hyacinth bean, and very many others. The fine 
blue spirea, which is not a spirea at all, will fairly 
glow in the sunshine; the hardy phlox will give 
richest coloring and a splendid showing all the late 
summer; the deutzias, spireas, weigelas, and hy- 
drangeas will do superbly, and the golden wands of 
the forsythia will open in earliest spring. 

Is it sandy in the yard, as along the seacoast? 
Sunflowers and hypericums will grow; the vincas or 
periwinkles will fairly cover themselves with bloom; 
the lovely little portulacas will defy both sand and 
sun; blazing star and cobea will bloom. For rocks, 
there are hundreds of lovely plants : campanulas, the 
exquisite moss-pink, the sweet daphne, the hardy 
cactuses, and so on. For heavy clay many hardy 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 35 

plants are available : the lilacs, the altheas, the colum- 
bine, the gas plant, the lovely forget-me-not. There 
are annuals of merit also for clay, including sweet 
peas and zinnias. 

10. A Natural Plan for the Larger Areas. All that 
has been said of the dooryard applies to the larger 
grounds, and more, for here may be planted the 
shrubs of more robust growth, as well as smaller 
trees. I can suggest no better way to improve and 
plan a suburban lot, a small country home, the farm- 
house flower garden, than to propose careful con- 
sideration of the plants and trees native to the 
neighborhood. In a certain city, a well-planted yard 
on a prominent street shows for three midsummer 
weeks a superb rose-mallow in bloom, always attract- 
ing attention; yet, within two miles of the spot, two 
acres of the same plant bloom almost unseen, and 
tens of thousands of ''commuters" see — or don't see 
— hundreds of acres softly aglow with the same rose- 
mallow as they cross the Hackensack marshes daily ! 
How much better to individualize these plants of 
the neighborhood, sure to do well, than to work only 
with the monotony of geranium, coleus, canna, and 
verbena! A few trips to the woods and meadows 
nearest the home — and I have purposely spoken of 
beautiful but common flowers seen near to the 
greatest congestion of urban population in the 
United States, having also seen many lovely wild 
things in bloom close to the smoke of Chicago — will 
give suggestions worth while. 

There are nurserymen who specialize in the hardy 



36 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

wild flowers, and from whom may be had plants of 
better transplanting quality than can be ''collected" 
from the woods. Moreover, I want here to record 
my deprecation of the ravishing of the nearby bits 
of wild nature yet remaining. It is unfair and selfish 
to take from the woods and meadows anything that, 
if left, will make them more beautiful for those who 
come after you. A skillful transplanter can at times 
thin out a long-time-growing clump of columbine or 
wild phlox so that its beauty will shortly be en- 
hanced; but to ruthlessly take up all of anything is 
most improper and unfair. As I have said, there are 
nurserymen who grow better plants, which you can 
have delivered to your door for a small sum. 

11. Plant for Succession of Bloom and Interest. 
The proper home garden should show something 
interesting every day from snow to snow, from crocus 
to chrysanthemum. Often there is a fine burst of 
spring bloom, followed by a lack of flowers in the 
summer months. This need not be, for, with care in 
selection, something attractive can be had all the 
growing season. Even with purely hardy plants this 
may be arranged, and it is quite easy if some of the 
good annuals are also included. A few suggestions 
follow; they should be considered in connection with 
the remarks as to location and condition found in 
Section 9. 

12. For Spring Bloom. This list is made pur- 
posely sparse, as in every locality the spring pro- 
vides a profusion of flowers. 

Bulbs, planted the autumn before, hardy, and may 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 37 

be left in the ground; other plants may follow them 
as foliage dies away: Snowdrops, crocus, scilla, 
early and late tulips, hyacinths of many kinds (may 
freeze if unprotected in the far North), daffodils, and 
other narcissi; and for shady places trilliums, dog's- 
tooth violets, lily-of-the-valley. 

Hardy, Low-growing Plants, set the autumn before, 
if possible: Moss pink, columbines, sweet williams, 
clove pinks, dwarf and German iris; and for shade, 
blue phlox, spring beauty, bluets, Virginia cowslip, 
toothwort, moccasin flowers, Dutchman's breeches, 
hepatica, bloodroot; many ferns; English daisy, 
hardy primroses, periwinkle. 

Shrubs and Larger Plants: Forsythia, Deutzia 
gracilis, early spireas, peonies, bleeding-heart, ori- 
ental poppies, lychnis, German and Siberian iris, 
many lilacs, spice-bush, many mock oranges, many 
roses, snowballs and other viburnums, dogwoods, 
weigelas, bush honeysuckles, elders, the smaller 
magnolias; also, good but less hardy, tamarix, 
Japan quince, jasminum. Azalea mollis and A. 
amoena. 

Trees, especially small trees suited for lawns: 
Double-flowering apples, wild crab, Chinese crab, 
Siberian crab, magnolias, white dogwood, hawthorns, 
yellow-wood, red-bud, Japan tree lilac, koelreuteria. 

13. For Midsummer and Early Fall. This is the 
time when bloom is likely to be scarce, and the plant- 
ing ought to be carefully worked out. 

Bulbs, not hardy over winter, planted early and 
in several successive plantings (except the hardy 




Fig. 17. Auratum lily; blooms in midsummer 

(38) 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 39 

lilies, which should go into the ground the autumn 
previous) : Gladioli, tigridias, and tuberoses ; many 
fine hardy lilies (must be planted without manure, 
using peat or leaf -mold). Dahlias are superb till 
frost (tuberous roots, planted in spring). 

Hardy Herbs, Shrubs and Plants, planted early 
in same season: Japanese iris, hollyhocks, perennial 
sunflowers, golden glow and other rudbeckias, 
monardas, cardinal flower (in wet places), American 
rhododendrons (in shady places, not in Hmestone 
soil), late spireas, achilleas, tansy, perennial phlox, 
caryopteris, hemerocallis, funkias, later Canterbury 
bells and larkspurs, fire-pink, rose-mallow, water- 
lilies and lotuses (for the aquatic garden), boneset, 
Joe-pye, black cohosh, dwarf horse-chestnut, core- 
opsis, aconite, purple loosestrife, sumacs, white elder. 

Annuals, grown from seed the same season: 
Alyssum, candytuft, summer chrysanthemums, core- 
opsis, marigolds, coxcombs, portulaca, annual sun- 
flowers, ten-weeks stocks, four-o'clocks, verbenas, 
clarkia, zinnias, garden asters, Shirley poppies, 
Drummond phlox, dwarf nasturtiums, dianthus 
(perennials and biennials). 

Large trees that bloom or are otherwise especially 
attractive: Sweet chestnut, tulip or liriodendron, 
basswood, locust, catalpas, maples, liquidambar. 

14. For Late Fall, until Cut off by Frost, and for 
Winter. Including some fine plants, to round out the 
season; there are many others. 

Plants: Various hydrangeas, various goldenrods, 
many fine hardy asters, boltonias, hardy chrysan- 



40 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

themums (some of the Japanese varieties become 
hardy) . 

Plants and Trees Attractive in fall by reason of 
showy fruits are exceedingly useful, and have not 
been availed of to any great extent; most of them 
furnish also handsome bloom earlier in the season: 
All the dogwoods, including kinds with red, black 
and blue berries and red bark; snowberry and Indian 
currant; all the viburnums (these are superb both 
in flower and fruit, and some have foliage that colors 
brilliantly) ; both American and European mountain 
ashes; witch-hazel blooms about freezing-time; 
foliage and fruit of Thunberg's and the common 
barberry, black alder, red-berried alder. 

Particularly consider the Japanese or Thunberg's 
Barberry (Berberis Thunbergii) as a shrub useful 
in many places, and individually beautiful all the 
time. It will grow in almost dense shade as well as 
in full sun; it ' 'breaks" in early spring into dainty 
leaves, followed by pleasing yellow flowers, quickly 
maturing into bright red berries; the midsummer 
foliage is of richly varied deep greens, and it early 
begins to assume brilliant fall tones, which hold 
in crimson and scarlet until heavy freezing; the 
scarlet fruit persists all winter, and it is exceedingly 
beautiful when encased in sleet or partly covered 
with soft snow; at all times the shrub is of gracefully 
arching form, and it requires no trimming. 

15. These Lists are Incomplete. They are intended 
to start home-improvers in various parts of America 
to noting for themselves the trees, shrubs, vines, and 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 41 

plants that are doing best and covering the longest 
seasons of usefulness in their own neighborhoods. 
If this inquiry is made, it will undoubtedly result 
in much successful home-ground planting out of the 
ordinary, and both permanent and pleasing. It 
should be remembered that many herbs and shrubs 
can be easily transplanted from nearby woods and 
fields, and these are often fully as attractive as the 
garden kinds. Some nurserymen make a specialty 
of the ^Vild" plants, as I have said, and others show 
assortments of ornamental plants for special pur- 
poses that are usually worthy. It may be generally 
depended upon that the nurserymen advertising in 
the garden periodicals are the more enterprising, and 
are more likely to have a varied assortment. Some 
of the older nurseries have as yet paid but scant 
attention to ornamental trees and shrubs, resting 
their offerings upon a few "standards" that are 
already overplanted. The varied exposures and 
opportunities of the United States are worth better 
planting than can happen when the choice is 
restricted to Norway maple, cut-leaved birch, ori- 
ental plane, two or three deutzias and spireas, the 
overdone hydrangea "p. g.," golden glow, Norway 
spruce, and the glaring Colorado blue spruce. Let us 
branch out into the glory of a flora that includes 
literally thousands of fine trees, plants, and shrubs 
to choose from, ''for every place and purpose," as 
one enterprising nurseryman puts it. 

16. Hardy Herbaceous Perennials. Especial men- 
tion must be made of the plants that are generally 



42 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



hardy, being ''perennial" — as living over from year 
to year with little or no protection in winter, and 
''herbaceous" — dying down to the ground in winter. 




Fig. 18. A good border of mostly hardy herbaceous 
perennials. 

(These plants are by this term "herbaceous" dis- 
tinguished from other plants which are called 
"shrubs" because they have a persisting woody 
frame that lives partially or wholly from year to 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 43 

year, losing foliage in winter if called also ' 'decidu- 
ous" — the lilac, for instance — or keeping foliage if 
^'evergreen," as does the laurel or the rhododendron.) 
Hardy herbaceous plants have been mentioned 
freely in these pages, but it is well to separately call 
attention to their value for home planting. They are 
usually easy to grow, easy to transplant, and inex- 
pensive to purchase; without them, a home planting 




Fig. 19. A rich herbaceous planting along a stone walk. 

would suffer in the loss of the peonies, the delphin- 
iums, the phloxes, rudbeckias, funkias, and scores of 
other favorites. Very many of the wild plants that 
are loved for beauty are herbaceous — as the asters, 
mertensias, and goldenrods. It is well to note par- 
ticularly the significance of this herbaceous feature, 
because the overlooking of what the little ''root" in 
April may become in August is likely to cause con- 
fusion. For instance, the pleasing "day lily," or 



44 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



funkia, can easily be planted in a foot of space in 
spring, but its handsome foliage may cover a circle 
of a yard's diameter by midsummer. 




Fig. 20. A fine herbaceous planting along a grass 
walk in the garden 

It is wise for the home planter who reads these 
pages to secure for his further enlightenment the 
catalogues of nurserymen who specialize in the hardy 
herbaceous perennials, for there are many of them 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 45 

not commonly grown that will prove particularly 
useful in the varied and individualistic planting I am 
preaching of in these pages. Hardy herbaceous 
perennials are the most easily managed and inex- 
pensive colors on the palette of the home artist who 
is planting growing pictures. 

Figures 18, 19, and 20 are illustrations of the effects 
attainable in the use of hardy herbaceous perennials 
in combination with trees and shrubs, and with such 
''in between" subjects as the German iris, which is 
partially evergreen, it is practicable to have bloom 
all the growing season from some one of the plants 
included in this most useful class. 

17. Tropical and Tender Plants. It has been well 
said that only the very rich can afford to adorn the 
home grounds with palms and the like; yet one sees 
most frequently about humbler homes plants of 
ephemeral character — cannas, coleus, geraniums, 
palms, tender ferns, etc. Scarcely a score of species 
are included in the usual round of easily grown and as 
easily killed plants offered for home adornment by 
the florists; yet I have named at least a hundred 
hardy plants and vines that give greater beauty f I'om 
time to time, and increase in strength from year to 
year. True, these hardy plants do not bloom con- 
tinually; but that is one of their merits; for it means 
a changing feast of flowers in the well-planted home 
yard, and this without the elaborate and continual 
attention required to keep in order the ordinary 
"beds" that are the same from July until frost. An 
occasional palm or fern as a pet plant, to be taken 



40 PLANTING TKE HOME GROUNDS 

into the living-room over winter; some of the easy- 
blooming tender plants for the window-box; helio- 
tropes and mignonette and sweet alyssum for fra- 
grance in the home — these can be cared for to advan- 
tage. The main reliance, however, should be on hardy 
plants and vines, needing less recurring annual 
expense, and providing individuality utterly lacking 
in the florist's planting. I have in mind, as an in- 
stance, a certain street in a mid-Pennsylvania city 
where it is the excellent habit to adorn the front 
porch of each house with a flower-box of some length, 
or to plant one border fronting the said porch, or to 
do both. Now the idea is altogether commendable; 
but it does seem as if imagination or knowledge must 
be lacking when all the boxes and all the beds or 
borders have red geraniums, periwinkles, and "dusty 
millers!" Fortunately, there is a pleasing variety 
in the house architecture, so that the monotony is 
somewhat broken, despite the effort of the florist to 
make the entire street look hke a row of toy tin 
soldiers ! Not a fuchsia,, not a heliotrope, even among 
the tender plants; and entire overlooking of the 
hardy plants that would have made individual 
pictures at each home instead of ''chromos!" Yet 
not fifty miles away the mountains are full of laurel, 
rhododendrons, ferns, viburnums, and the like, 
and the little streams around this city are gay all 
summer with spirea and monarda, with bonset and 
Joe-pye weed and the asters. 

18. Annual Flowers. By these I mean the pansies, 
balsams, salvias, marigolds, four-o'clocks, garden 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 47 

asters, zinnias, cockscombs, and scores of other 
beautiful flowers that give bloom the same season 
the seed is sown. They fill in the gaps while the 
hardy plants are growing, and have merits of their 
own. A half-dollar's worth of seed will do wonders. 
There are quick-growing annuals that are fine to 
serve as screens for unsightly spots that cannot be 
removed. Sunflowers, castor beans, cosmos will soon 
shade the ash-barrel. Shirley poppies will give a 
great burst of June bloom, and, if kept picked, will 
continue for many weeks. The showy and sturdy 
African marigolds can be bloomed right into the 
teeth of Jack Frost, and the sweet tobacco, or 
nicotiana, will give both bloom and fragrance from 
midsummer to the very end of the season, self-seed- 
ing then for another season. 

Annuals are indispensable in a home garden. 
With a sunny kitchen window to help, the earlier 
asters, the salvia, and the petunias — and many 
others — can be advanced for weeks by sowing ahead 
of outside warmth. Some of the finest flowers of the 
dianthus or carnation family may thus be brought 
into sure bloom in one season. 

The seedsmen's catalogues — some of them, at 
least — give carefully studied suggestions for the 
varied uses and locations of annuals, with details as 
to their heights, color effects, and like essentials. Or 
the gardening books I have referred to, particularly 
Bailey's '^Manual of Gardening," afford safe guides 
to the inexperienced. 

19. Use Vines Freely. Nothing should prevcmt 




'1. A telegraph pole dressed in clematis becomes 
less unsightly than if bare 



(48) 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 49 

the free use in home planting of the superb vines, 
both hardy and tender, available at little cost in the 
United States. To the graces of the standard shrub 
the vine adds the ability to creep or to climb, thus 
covering objects with a mantle of greenery, and 
usually of bloom. (See Figure 21 for an example of 
the way in which a clematis mitigated the bare ugli- 
ness of a telegraph pole.) Morover, certain vines that 
attach themselves to walls afford, in addition, an 
important protection and an insulation from heat 
and cold. This whole subject of the use of vines is so 
important that I will treat it under separate head- 
ings, for greater definiteness. 

20. Vines to Cover Walls. In this class are con- 
sidered only the hardy vines that by curious aerial 
rootlets attach themselves firmly to walls of brick, 
stone, stucco, or wood — less efficiently to the latter, 
and less desirably because of the assumed necessity 
arising from time to time for repainting. 

In the north, such vines include several sorts 
called either Ampelopsis or Parthenocissus by botan- 
ists. Of these the best known and most largely used 
is the "Boston ivy," or Ampelopsis tricuspidata, 
formerly known in trade as A . Veitchii. Of close and 
rapid growth, and with a certain admirable regularity 
of foliage as it g^ins age and strength, this hardy vine 
is not only beautiful but protective. 

A silly idea has been started on its course (by 
some brother of the man who thinks street shade- 
trees need frequent beheading under the guise of 
''trimming," or by some sister of the woman who 



50 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

makes her children drink sassafras tea in the spring 
to thin their blood), to the effect that vines injure 
walls. They hold dampness, they breed malaria, 
they are ''mihealthy," and probably — just as 
probably — cause corns on the feet ! It needs but the 
exercise of unobserving eyes, and the use of a little 
brain power, to show the entire fallacy of such bosh. 
Notice in a heavy summer rainstorm the action of 
the close-setting, shiny leaves of the Boston ivy; see 
them flatten to the wall, forming a smooth surface 
from which even a dashing rain is turned aside. Just 
so do they act in keeping off the hot sun and the 
chill wind, until frost has removed them in a shower 
of crimson glory; and then, as the vines age and their 
air-roots extend, these also shield the wall against the 
elements. I have proved for myself the protective 
action of this vine 'by tearing away a close network 
of its tendrils from the wall of the building in which 
these words are printed, to find fresh brick-work 
underneath, as compared with weatherbeaten ma- 
sonry outside the vine's reach. 

Similarly, I have personally seen how a tremen- 
dous wistaria which does not cling of itself (see Figure 
22), that had grown to the eaves and then up a roof 
valley of my boyhood's home, had actually preserved 
from decay the shingles it covered, while outside its 
reach the sun and rain had made these same shingles 
mere porous blotters. And I have never seen, nor has 
anyone been able to tell me actual details of, injury 
to any wall-surface by reason of a vine covering. 
Let the vine-slander perish ! 




Fig. 22. Wistaria to cover an entrance 
(51) 



52 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

There is one possibility of annoyance. If the 
tendrils of any vine are permitted to enter portions 
of a window-opening that are movable, the vine will 
tic it tight. If wistaria shoots are permitted thus to 
enter, they will later on, by the unsuspectedly great 
power of gradual growth, burst apart any small 
opening. The remedy is easy; just keep back in- 
trusive shoots by cutting them off about once a 
year. 

As to painting the home that is vine-covered: 
Don't paint it, at least under the vines. It is wholly 
unnecessary for protection, and it is sure to destroy 
the beauty of your vine blanket. The painters, in 
unthinking vandalism, will tear away the vines, and 
will actually paint right over the remaining rootlets, 
not actually covering the wall with pigment. It is a 
simple matter to insist on having them paint up to 
the vines, but not over them. It is not so simple to 
cause painters to realize that splashes of oily paint 
are death to vine stems. Indeed, house workmen as 
a whole are vandalistic in their habits in relation to 
growing things, and the home-owner who has worked 
hard to use God's greenery of vines and plants for 
making his house into a home will suffer tortures 
when he sees how carelessly the workmen have acted. 
There is a sure and easy remedy; make it a written 
part of your arrangement with carpenter, plumber, 
bricklayer, painter, that the plants must not be 
injured, under a definite money penalty for damages. 
Don't I know? I have now a certainty that the car- 
penters will not throw boards over my ferns and wild 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 53 

flowers about the home; because I have made such 
carelessness costly to them. 

But now let us look briefly at other hardy cling- 
ing vines. The Virginia creeper is a rampant grower, 

, and fine for very large surfaces. Sometimes the 
lovely trumpet creeper {Tecoma or Bignonia radi- 
cans) will cling. Of slower but sure growth is the 
evergreen Evonymus radicans, of which the broad- 
leaved variety vegetus is better and much more 
vigorous. When this vine gets age, it shows a marvel- 

I ous covering of scarlet berries in fall. There is a 

I rare and lovely climbing hydrangea {Hydrangea 
petiolaris, formerly called by the awful name of 
Schizophragma hydrangeoides) , which will cling, 

, when it properly starts, and which has not only 

I broad leaves but superb flowers. 

1 The so-called hardy or English ivy (Hedera Helix) 
is a splendid, evergreen, clinging vine where it is 
hardy; and the only way to know is to try. It will 
grow in shade, and, even if it freezes back, the young 
growth is lovely — if it has vigorous roots in good 

I ground to push it along. 

' Just here a word of caution. The home planter 
who sets vines wants them to grow. The house 
workmen who built were not concerned about vines; 

I wherefore it is usual to find the space within two or 

: three feet of the walls carefully unfertilized with 
brickbats, stone spalls, tin refuse, and anything and 
everything but arable soil. Also, to protect the wall, 
there is always and properly the overhang of the 
eaveS; and frequently a 'Vater-table" to further 



54 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

direct water away from the foundations. Now if the 
l)lanter is really interested in having his vines or 
other plants grow close to his home walls, he must 
provide for them good soil and enough water to per- 
mit the plants to use it. Some vines, especially the 
Boston ivy, will find water afar off, if it is there; but 
two feet of rich soil, and a little depression into 
which storm drainage may readily run, will assure 
earlier good results. If bricks are taken up to give 
space for vines, do not be stingy with the open 
space. There ought to be a diameter of at least two 
feet to the opening, which can be screened with heavy 
two-inch-mesh galvanized wire netting if traffic 
across the place is essential. Yet, as I have earlier 
said, a vine can start in the space of three bricks. 
(See Figure 25.) 

21. Vines for Trellises, Arbors, Pergolas, etc. Of 
these there is a vast variety. The house-side — and 
it is good practice, especially for a painted wooden 
house — may use this class of non-clinging climbers 
if a suitable trellis is provided. This can be made of 
wire or wood ; and, if the latter, cypress, well painted 
will last longer than ordinary galvanized steel wire. 

All the climbing roses come into use in this class, 
including the so-called ramblers, and the newer and 
finer hybrids, like Climbing American Beauty, 
Purity, American Pillar, Dr. Van Fleet, and so on. 
Select sorts of which there is assurance that the 
foliage is not easily subject to mildew. 

Certain of the climbing roses are especially pleas- 
ing to cover old trees. Dawson and Excelsa, for 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 55 

example, will go up twenty feet or more, providing 
a fine foliage cover and one marvelous burst of bloom. 
A telegraph pole that offends the home front can 
readily be made pleasing with a vine. Just a little 
support will sustain Clematis paniculata for such a 
purpose. (See Figure 21.) 

Clematis pa7iiculafa, C. tangutica (yellow flowers 
and lovely following seed-pods), sometimes C. Jack- 
mani (purple flowers; hard to grow, but fine!), 
C. flammula, Virginiana, coccinea, crispa — all have 
a proper place and use. Matrimony vine and Akebia 
quinata are both vigorous and handsome, and will 
do well in a small area. For broader effects, several 
wistarias, the trumpet creeper before mentioned, the 
superb actinidia, the Dutchman's pipe, and the 
bittersweet are all applicable. 

Of general-purpose vines, the honeysuckles are 
perhaps best of all. The form familiar in the middle 
states is the Japanese honeysuckle, or its variety 
Halleana, with or without gold-mottled or striped 
foliage. This fine plant, though in some sections a 
roadside weed, is not a native of America, coming, 
indeed, from China and Japan. It will do any reason- 
able thing that can be expected of a climber, from 
trailing over a rough bank to hold the soil, to making 
lovely a dead tree or an unsightly fence. Other 
honeysuckles are the woodbine, or Belgian form, and 
the native scentless scarlet trumpet, or so-called 
"evergreen" variety. All are good. 

Annual vines, grown in one season from seed, and 
perishing with frost, are very serviceable. No words 



66 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

of admiration need be written of the much-loved 
sweet pea. The cucumber vine {Echinocystis lobata) 
is of tremendous vigor, and will cover a rubbish pile 
or a fence almost while you look. Scarlet runner 
bean (good also for food), morning-glories (hard* to 
get rid of, later) balloon vine, cobsea, Japanese hop, 
and many others, can be had for little cost and in a 
hurry. 

22. Trailing Vines. These have a special value 
for covering walls where there is earth at the top so 
that they may hang over; and for clothing steep 
banks are better than grass. It is far easier and better 
to hold a steep slope with a honeysuckle cover, 
needing shearing say once a year, than to fight to 
establish and sweat to maintain grass in the same 
place. The Japanese honeysuckle will grow and root 
ahead in ground that will not produce a good sward. 

The Wichuraiana rose is lovely for the same use, 
but it is not always hardy. Some of its hybrids are 
much more hardy; for instance, Alberic Barbier, 
which has glossy, dark green foliage and creamy 
white flowers. Any rose which manifests a dispo- 
sition to creep rather than climb is available for this 
use. The Boston ivy and the Virginia creeper will 
also creep rapidly, and some of the clematises are 
useful. Around a stone entrance-step the fine peri- 
winkle or '^myrtle" {Vinca minor) will provide a 
beautiful evergreen cover, with lovely blue bloom in 
spring. This same excellent trailer is good for a 
half -shaded bank; but, if the bank be dry, plant it 
in little pockets, shaped to catch the moisture. 




Fig. 23. Use of Rosa rugosa as a driveway hedge 
(57) 



m PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

In the wonderful Arnold Arboretum at Jamaica 
Plain, Mass., near Boston, where all hardy trees and 
shrubs and vines are to be seen as in a living museum 
or library, great use is made along walls of the wild 
grape-vines, bittersweet, etc. By cutting these 
back to a stump every year, new growth is secured 
that gives a splendidly decorative effect. 

To hang over walls, any of the trailing vines will 
be effective. At Biltmore House there is a living and 
wind-swayed evergreen curtain of English ivy worth 
a long journey to see. Use vines freely, and with 
common sense and kindness, and the result will be 
pleasing. 

The South has many lovely vines not available 
in frosty states. The tender forms of tecoma, the 
showy bougainvillea, the fine allamanda, and other 
vines aid the home decorator. 

23. Living Fences and Hedges. The very best wa3^ 
to take away the hatefulness of a fence is to cover it 
with something beautiful, good for the fencer and 
the fenced to see. For a hardy hedge that is a fence 
itself, plant California privet, Amoor River privet, 
Japanese quince, several barberries, Rosa rugosa, 
cockspur thorn, altheas. Of these, the Thunberg's 
barberry is the very best, as I have previously 
urged. If Rosa rugosa is trimmed annually, it can 
make a wonderful hedge, or fence. (See Figure 23.) 
Any of the evergreen honeysuckles will make a fine 
hedge, and the deutzias and spireas are excellent, as 
are most of the viburnums. Some of the climbing 
annuals will cover a fence, and I am partial to the 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 50 

vine of the sweet potato, also. Do not plant ever- 
green hedges of pine and spruce, for they grow too 
high and are hard to restrain without great expense 
for trimming, also spreading too much horizontally. 
(See Figure 13.) 




Fig. 24. A well-trimmed privet hedge. 

If you feel that you must have a formal hedge or 
fence, and are willing to do the frequent shearing 
necessary to keep the decided-upon form, it can be 
said to your help that California privet will give the 
quickest, neatest, and cheapest effect, and that in a 
severe winter it may freeze to the ground so that 
you start all over again. Figure 24 shows a square- 



60 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

trimmed privet hedge of a pleasing appearance. A 
hedge of hemlock will stay fine if it is constantly 
trimmed to shape, to keep bushy twigs outside — 
I have just seen an awful mess where the trimming 
was postponed for several years. Boxwood is the 
most permanent of formal hedges, and also the most 
expensive. 

Living division fences or plantings to shut out 
the stable or kitchen are often made of trees. The 
Carolina poplar is excusable for this use, for, if 
planted not over eighteen inches apart (better in two 
rows, ''staggered"), and trimmed to a whip, it can 
be made to yield a close fence of any desired height, 
even up to twenty feet. There are obtainable for the 
wealthy, wonderful trained beech hedges; and these 
same gentry can buy old evergreen hedges fifteen 
feet high which the right nurseryman will move into 
place successfully. 

24. As to Preparation of Soil. Having discussed 
plans and plants, we may well turn to the ground in 
which they are to be made effective. FoiTnerly there 
was a great prolixity of directions for the mixing of 
soils for various plants, and the English gardening 
books give many prescriptions that would be hard 
to fill. Many plants have a habit of growing under 
all sorts of soil conditions; I have seen the peri- 
winkle doing well in heavy soil, and have seen it 
fairly riot in the Florida white sand. To get home 
results, let us do the best we can; and that means at 
least the thorough stirring of the soil, deep enough 
to give the plant roots a chance. If you make it 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 61 

easy for them to penetrate the ground for food and 
moisture, they will give you evidence of that fact 
in bloom and in growth. 

There are only a few truisms about soils. Very 
heavy, clayey soils need to be broken up and made 
lighter. Coal-ashes will do it and sand will do it; a 
shovel and rake must intervene. Turning in deeply 
loose manure or rotted sods will help doubly; plant- 
ing the various clovers — red and scarlet — will both 
break up the soil and add ''humus," if the clovers are 
then turned in, after growing to the height of a foot 
or less. These heavy soils are happiness for some 
plants; simply tame the ground to your needs. In 
sand, it is difficult to add the lacking element of 
clay, and easier to adapt the planting to the sand. 
But always the ground can be fully dug and pulver- 
ized, and that is much. Some rotted sods or manure 
will add fertility. 

25. Have a Compost Pile. About most places with 
an area of 10,000 feet or more, it is practicable to 
have a muck-heap, or soil factory. I have such at 
my home; at one end are piled all the weeds, soft 
trimmings, dead-plant remains, grass-clippings, cab- 
bage leaves, and particularly as many fallen tree 
leaves in the fall as can be had. Snow is piled on, and 
the hose turned on, while the whole mass is handled 
several times each summer. Coarse manure, not fit 
for the garden, goes in; indeed, any vegetable matter 
that will rot is piled here. At the other end, each 
year I sift out the precious black leaf -mold which is 
nearly the English peat, and which if obtainable at 



62 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



all in commerce will cost from $4 to $6 per cubic yard, 
or half as much per cart-load. Nothing is burned 
that can be rotted, and thus returned to the soil, 
plus the precious nitrogen taken from the air. 

Smell? Not at all; if properly managed there is 
no odor, nothing in the least objectionable. A con- 
stant summer 
covering of lawn 
clippings gives 
even an agreeable 
yellow-gray color 
to the pile. Try 
it! Many woods 
plants that will 
not grow or that 
barely live in ordi- 
nary garden soil 
will flourish when 
given half-bulk of 
this leaf soil. Rhododendrons and laurels live on it; 
they die in limestone garden soils. 

26. Plants Do Not Like Wet Feet. Except for the 
purely aquatic and bog plants, water standing about 
the roots is fatal. That is one reason for thorough 
and deep digging, and for the addition of lighter 
material to clay soils — to afford an opportunity for 
the surplus water to pass through. If the home 
grounds are damp, dig deeply and see that there is 
enough depth and opening to drain the ground of 
superfluous moisture. Coarse lumps, small stones, 
rough manure, all are excellent drainage materials 




Fig. 25. Preparing for vine against the house. 
A, sterile soil; B, pocket of good loam. 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 63 

to secure plant comfort. Put them down, down, well 
below the roots. Don't be afraid to go two or three 
feet below the surface; prize roses were raised near 
Philadelphia by a woman who prepared the ground 
four feet deep, the bottom foot being coarse drainage 
material. 

27. Give the Plants a Start with Good Soil. Figures 
25 and 26 illustrate this point, both as to locating a 
tree or shrub, and as to a vine against the house. To 
put old sods, and old bones as well, at the bottom of 
these holes, is to provide a store of fertility in con- 
nection with the good loam that it is best to use 
around the trees or 

plants. 

28. Planting Hints. 
Do not set the plants 
deeper than they were 
in the nursery, except 
in the case of budded 
or grafted roses, which 
must be planted two or 
three inches deeper, so W/// /I poor 

.1 , ,1 1 , W/a M sub soil 

that the lower parent 

G+nplr" rlnAo y\c\\ <3.c\ Fig. 26. Providing good soil in which to 
hWCK aoes not so plant where the land lacks fertility. 

easily have chance to 

send up ''suckers." (Watch for these — they will have 
nine leaflets on a stem; cut them off below the ground.) 
It is good practice to set all roses a little deeper than 
the surface. Plant solidly, firming the ground by 
tramping with the feet, or by the use of a maul. 
This may seem a contradiction, but it isn't; we dig 




64 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 



and pulverize the soil to break it up into small 
particles; we firm it around the plant to keep air 
away and to bring these particles in contact with the \ 
roots. Cover the ground, after planting, with some 
loose material, as leaves, sawdust, bagging, sand, to 
keep the sun's rays from too soon and too strongly 

acting upon the 
roots. 

29. Nearly All 
Plants and Trees 
Need Trimming 
When Planted. This 
is to restore the 
balance between 
root and top. See 
Figure 27 to know 
why, and also to 
know that a larger 
proportion of neces- 
sary roots is ob- 
tained with small, 
thrifty trees than 

Fig. 27. Three-year-old tree in the nur- -tu^ith Iq ro-pr nnp« 

sery; dotted lines show how roots are cut in ^ . ^ icii^ci uiic». 

digging. Upper figure a one-year-old tree; Trim Carefullv, CUt- 

nearly all the roots are saved. . . 

tmg out crossmg 
and opposite twigs; cut close to a bud; use a sharp 
knife. Trim any torn ends of roots, also; root growth 
frequently starts from these trimmed ends. Do not 
allow the roots to become dry while you are prepar- 
ing the ground or planting; they are just as unhappy 
in the air as a fish. Keep the roots in moist ground, or 




PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 65 

in a puddle of thin mud, until the moment of plant- 
ing. Plants whose roots have never dried out grow 
sooner and faster than those that have been hurt 
by the air and the sun acting on the parts rjature 
wants covered. Particularly is it important that ever- 
green roots are kept moist, for, if they once dry out, 
the resinous sap congeals and cannot be again made 
to circulate. In buying evergreens, it is better to 
purchase, even at a higher cost, plants shipped with 
a ball of earth confined about the roots by burlap. 

30. About Watering. On the whole, it is best not 
to water plants, if they have been carefully set in 
good soil, that soil thoroughly soaked after planting, 
and provided with a "mulch" to keep off the sun's 
rays for a while. Daily sprinkling of the ground is a 
positive detriment; a weekly soaking, thoroughly 
done, is useful in a very dry time. The best way to 
provide water is to keep in the soil what is there for 
the plant's use by constant and thorough cultivation. 
I know a skillful grower of dahlias who yearly sets 
out over fifty acres of those beautiful but water- 
hungry plants on New Jersey sand. He can't water, 
anyway, but he doesn't want to; he does keep the 
ground always so actively stirred or cultivated as 
to be dusty, and the dust is a good preventive of 
evaporation from the soil. Hard ground drips water 
upward into the air; weeds and grass pour it upward. 
Therefore cultivate, rather than water, under 
ordinary conditions. 

But there occur long periods of dry weather, under 
a hot summer sun, when the newly set plants are 



66 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

hardly able to transpire from the soil enough mois- 
ture to meet the evaporative demands. As I have 
said, a weekly soaking is useful, very useful, in such 
a time. Make it a real soaking — I have poured ten 
gallons of water around one evergreen tree only four 
feet high, and have seen the ground take it all in. 
A sprinkling would have been useless. 

Go slow with the favorite and indiscriminate use 
of the garden hose, squirting water around forcibly 
where it is of little use, and missing dry places. Take 
off the nozzle, turn down the water so that it runs 
from the hose-end without splashing power, and then 
get this under branches to the roots into ground 
previously loosened. Keep it running until the 
ground is wet a foot deep; then quit until it is again 
moderately dry on top. 

There are excellent general sprinklers for real 
watering like rain waters. The Campbell sprinkler 
will cover with fine, misty rain a fifty-foot-diameter 
circle, and it ought to run at least a half -hour in one 
setting to do real good. The Skinner '^Lawn-Mist" 
will make water dust over a space of twelve feet by 
six feet, and moisten without packing, if left long 
enough in one place. Some others of the commercial 
sprinklers are good; most are good for nothing. 

31. To Make a Lawn. The charm of green grass 
about the home is admitted, and grass surely grows 
easily. To have it under that form of control which 
makes the result a good lawn, large or small, re- 
quires a little care. To begin with, there must be 
good soil, and of uniform depth, if the result is to be 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 67 

even and satisfactory. To have small portions of very 
good or very poor soil makes unsightly spots. If the 
home lawn is uneven, and if it has in it more grass 
than weeds, the sod should be lifted and the ground 
put in proper order. This is not very difficult ; cut the 
sod in strips about fifteen inches wide and four or 
five feet long by striking through with a sharp spade, 
held vertically, using a line to keep straight. Then, 



Fig. 28. Method of rolling up old sod and regrading 
a poor slope 

with some one to help, cut under the grass at one end 
of the strip, to form a sod about three inches thick, 
or less, thus including most of the roots, and turn 
up the loosened end, rolling it with the grass inside, 
as you would roll up a thick rug. Figure 28 shows 
the idea, and also how to re-grade a poor slope or an 
uneven surface. 

With the sod removed, prepare the subsoil by 
thorough digging, to an even depth, working in a 
dressing of well-rotted manure if obtainable, or if 
not, some one of the many commercial lawn fertil- 
izers. Whatever else you do, be sure thoroughly to 
mix the whole upper part of the ground to an even 
depth of fully twelve inches. If there are bad spots, 
remove the earth entirely from such, and substitute 
soil as good as the average. Dig, spade, rake, pul- 




Fig. 29. The greenery of planting in four years 
(68) 



PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 69 

verize — make it even all through, and then roll it 
smooth before relaying the sods. 

In relaying the rolls of sod, join the edges smoothly 
— an old table-knife is a good tool to use. Fill in all 
crevices with good soil; pound the sods down with 
the flat of your spade — you cannot have them too 
solid. When all is smooth and even, water it thor- 
oughly, soaking to the roots, and then sprinkle or sow 
pure lawn grass seed, especially in any crevices you 
have filled. The kind of seed will vary with the 
locality and circumstances — blue grass is almost 
universally useful, but the seedsman will give you 
a special mixture of grass seed suited for shady 
spots. 

32. To Sow a Lawn. Exactly the same prepara- 
tion should be made as that described in Section 31, 
when it is proposed to make a new lawn. Dig, 
fertilize, pulverize, rake smooth, sow evenly and 
carefully; sow plentifully; roll as soon as the new 
grass has had one cutting; fix up bare spots with 
more seed. A good lawn can be well started in three 
or four months, under favorable circumstances. 
April and May, and September, are the best months 
in the latitude of New York. The idea is to sow 
while active growth is proceeding, and not in the 
heat of summer, or just before winter's advent. 

33. Plant Something. If you can't do as these or 
better hints suggest, plant anyhow, doing the best 
for the plants that circumstances will permit. It is 
better to have planted and had failures, rather than 
not to have planted at all, in the opinion of Dr. 



70 PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS 

Bailey, of Cornell, who is a wise planter, a great 
authority, and, most of all, actually human. The 
effort of planting is beneficial, and it is almost certain 
that a reward will be seen. Do not expect wonders 
at once; but any growth at one's own hands is 
wonderful, in the best sense. Plant for the home, 
and plant to make the town better-looking. Plant 
for your own eyes, and plant to help keep the land 
fertile — for that is one effect of more planting. But 
plant, plant, as carefully as may be ; plant anyway ! 
The lovely greenery of Figure 29 resulted in four 
years from bare ground, and it was beautiful even 
the first year. Try it ! 



p D 63 i 



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